Occasionally, like Alexander the Great, adventurous souls living today's degenerate modern life weep because there are no more worlds to conquer. Everest has been climbed, then parachuted; the English Channel has not just been swum, but crossed by flying jetpack also; hardy golfers have played "the most remote and climatically …

Playmobil reconstruction

Dig it.

The whole length?

Not quite, more two-thirds of it. Though petrol stations may be too few to make it much further north in the digger.

Also, "Mr Mutanen normally works with Sunward's Finnish distributor, and the two firms have generously supported his record-breaking attempt by providing the digger and maintenance support during the trip". Isn't he a "excavator repairman" himself? Does "maintenance support" refer to himself, or is that too cynical?

Finally, I expect any follow-up story to be labelled "RotM", seeing that the digger is manufactured by Hunan Sunward *Intelligent Machinery* Company. I was going to Finland for the summer, but maybe I should cancel the trip...

Awesome

ouch!

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It's boring enough driving my Yanmar B08-3 more than quarter of a mile, watching a video stream of someone else going hundreds of miles, uh? Also, the miles per gallon of these machines is atrocious, they're really meant for digging and getting around on rough terrain.

Pointless

I live in Finland and saw this on local news - the thing is, he's doing it for utterly no purpose. The sponsorship and dedication of his fans is to no end purpose, except in and of itself. He isn't doing it to raise money for charity or anything. He's just... doing it. Now, I'm a huge fan of doing things for the sake of doing things, but this goes above and beyond - if you're going to reap yourself sponsorships and media attention, why not do something worthwhile with it?

Attitude difference: "pointless"

The british/american attitude is that all has to be done for charity; the rest of the world disagrees. You challenge nature and/or yourself just "because it's there".

I find it hard to explain that for example people climb Mt Everest "for charity" making something like 50k profit (while spending another 100k at the least --- so 2 out of 3 charitable donations are burned). It's just punters paying your dream holiday, "for charity".

I've integrated well here, though --- I refuse to come out of bed now, unless it's for charity.

But they are!

This project clearly demonstrates that they are just as mad as the rest of us. Maybe a tad better at it, at that. It's those long dark winter nights, I recon - "Wouldn't it be fun to ride a digger across the country?" "Sure, great idea! Pass the vodka and pour some water on the stones." Mad as hatters, the lot...

I'd agree on Finns not being Vikings

and their language is something else again, unrelated to the other Scandinavian languages (indeed unrelated to nearly all other European languages except Estonian and Hungarian. (Minä puhun suomen kieltä vähän.).

But certainly Finland is generally reckoned as Scandinavia and certainly their flag is a colour-variant of the other Scandinavian national flags.

They're even madder than that!

I have some Finnish friends, and they are bonkers.

They're also totally addicted to mobile phones. Not fruit flavoured toy ones either. You go out for a drink and they will constantly have a beer in one hand, a vodka shot in another hand and a mobile phone is another hand! It's no accident that a very large proportion of mobile devices originate from that area of the world.

The long winter nights just give them time to dream up crazy ways to enjoy the summer!

David Lynch?

D'ya think he's a David Lynch fan and has seen the Straight Story ? Not yer average David Lynch movie, this beautiful work is the true story of Alvin Straight, who drove across two US States on a ride-on lawnmower for a reconciliation with his brother.

The REASON for this whole thing!!

What, wasn't included to this report, is the REAL reason for this trip. These days the Facebook is just full of those "If so and so many ppl joins I'll do this and that" -groups. Jukka Mutanen decided to make this group as a joke (maybe rolling his eyes for it a little), and was stunned when masses of people started to join to it.

Because of the nature of a Finnish man who'll never eat his words, he had no choice but have a laugh and start to make preparations. I believe they have called to none of the sponsors, but the sponsors have contacted to them. This journey has been epic already, the people along the way have been helping him in any way they can, filling up the tank, bringing him snacks, something to drink etc. He has never asked anyone to do this, that's why people want to help and cheer him along the way.. AND they have offered to make a use to the publicity and take a part of any charity event they asked for... If no organisation is clever enough to use this then its really their shame..

And btw. Culturally we have the most in common to the scandinavian culture because the tight bond with the neighbourland Sweden, which is like our big brother.. Finland's second official language is swedish. So even though Finland is not geographicly a part of Scandinavia, it is still concidered It to be a cultural part of Scandinavia..

I am so unimpressed....

Pfft. Who cares.

A friend went from Sydney, to far north Queensland, australia (cape York) in an early model Holden Camira. The one that blows smoke.

He didn't have GPS covering his trip, he didn't have backup, he didn't have sponsorship, he didn't have a cheap photoshop image of him standing in front of the car with a fake background. And he didn't advertise his choice of vehicle to world+dog.

Going the distance

@ Sarah Bee / Scandinavia

Actually, I think you'll find that Scandinavia is so-named for the Scandinavian Mountains, which divide Sweden and Norway and then dive underground towards Denmark. Being on a different part of the landmass (physically Asia, as opposed to the penninsula of Sweden and Norway), Finland is only linked culturally and historically to those other nations, and is therefore Nordic (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland) rather than Scandinavian (geographically Sweden, Norway, Denmark). It's rather like distinguishing Scots, English, Irish and Welsh, but at the same time keeping a seperate distinction of British vs European.

is he just doing ...

@ AC / Is that really a live feed?

It probably does look very similar, Finland is an extremely dull and repetitive country (at least as far as road travel is concerned). Watch out and see if there's a change of weather this weekend - it's set to rain heavily.